The seventh(!) beta of Pinstachio has been released and this one was harder than expected to push out the door. Why? Apple Events changes in Mojave.

The story is simple: starting with Mojave, when apps attempt to control or automate another app, macOS will step in and show a dialog to ask the user permission for the app to “play” with other apps, much similar to how it’s done for other content (Contacts, location, etc.). This is another big step in Apple’s on-going mission to secure a user’s data and respect their privacy.

However, if you’ve read many of the blog posts online about this security addition, you can tell that Apple could’ve done better in making it friendlier to developers. Felix Schwarz wrote a very good post about it here, so I won’t go into much details.

If you’re a developer and are interested in a few thoughts and realizations obtained after adding support for this:

Support this ASAP because users won’t know why their apps are failing if they accidentally (or purposefully) declined access. (Also known as: “this Pinstachio update should’ve been released a while back!”)

Expect some headaches. Pinstachio’s interaction is very superficial and still took a while to figure out certain edge cases.

Provide the best description possible of why the app is requesting access to another app inside the app’s plist. Hopefully it will be read and provide clarification.

Provide an elaborate alert with instructions (as suggested by Felix), which will allow someone using the app to reverse course if they declined access. Because Apple does not make it easy!

Test, test, test. (Expect to clear permissions a lot through the Terminal.)

Other than that, there were no earth-shattering revelations. And other developers have also expressed similar conclusions already. So if you’ve read into the subject before, you should be good.

Pinstachio is a new Mac micro-client for Pinboard, and I hope that you’ll consider giving it a try if you have a Pinboard account.

But wait, what? Micro-client? Yes, this is not a full-featured client for Pinboard. It’s a small and simple Mac app that lives exclusively in your menu bar.

So, what does it do, exactly? Well…

It saves the current website you’re viewing from Safari or Chrome into Pinboard, all without the need for extensions on each browser.

It shows your most recent items that you have saved to your Pinboard account.

That’s pretty much it!

The gimmick here is that its use revolves around the use of hotkeys (which you can assign) for saving the current website you’re using without the need of clicking through the app’s menu bar icon. It also fetches your tags so that they can be autofilled as you type possible tags.

So if you wanted a bite-sized Pinboard app for your Mac, please give Pinstachio a try!

You can download the beta directly through this link. If you find a bug or something that’s just not quite right, please let me know through the app or here.

The app itself comes with a 14-day free trial without limitations, and will cost $4.99 USD. But for any testers who try it right now and like it, I’m offering a 50%-off coupon. On checkout (powered by Paddle), simply enter the coupon: THANKS4TESTING

The coupon will expire when Pinstachio 1.0 leaves its beta state.

That’s it for now. Over the next few days, I’m going to be talking more about Pinstachio and what went on behind the scenes (I promised more writing in the previous post, after all!). I’ll cover topics such as: what can be expected of the 1.0, what’s planned for the future, and my experience of moving from an App Store distribution to an external distribution.

I’ve had MacRecon for a long time. I got it when I was a high school student and turned it into a Mac blog with moderate success. Then the iPhone came around, and then it wasn’t only a Mac blog – it was an Apple blog.

By the time I was in college studying computer science, it then became an Apple blog with apps. If by any chance you’ve followed since and remember that those were small and simple apps. The first one was TipAgent, a tip calculator.

But eventually, the apps overtook the blog. Also, being a full-time student was hard. The blog was abandoned (and archived, somewhere still in my old files), and MacRecon became the brand for my indepent app development efforts.

There were some nice apps. I remember TaskAgent very fondly, but, unfortunately, I could never figure out how to market it. In the end, the sales weren’t enough to justify further development, sadly. Then other apps went the same way, until only Fileup and Sidefari remained.

Today, I am trying something. MacRecon, which has long spent its last year or so “under construction” is finally returning into something familiar: a micro blog with the independent app development shop attached to it.

My intentions are to post more Apple-related posts (and, who knows, maybe even more general things, as long as it is relevant to the apps), since I love writing words besides code. The posts may not necessarily be long like this one, but I want to see if I am able to keep it up. I have a full-time job at a wonderful company, after all.

Also, if you’ve read this far, I would like to pre-announce a new and very simple app coming soon to the Mac: Pinstachio. It’s one that I’ve had rattling up in my head for a while now, and the beta is nearly complete. I am being purposefully vague about the app, but, if you’re still reading this, I hope you’ll consider giving it a go as soon as the beta is ready. I’ll, of course, put the full details in this blog. So if you have a Micro.blog account, why not give this account a follow?